End column

By Peter Simple

12:01AM GMT 13 Feb 2004

An Evil Dream

A plague of wind turbines is steadily advancing, threatening to infest all Britain with hideous structures. Not long ago I wrote of the wind industry's plan to profane the upper Eden Valley in Westmorland.

Now a reader in Northern Ireland writes of a scheme to build the biggest wind farm in Western Europe on the coast between the Inishowen peninsula in Donegal and Portstewart in Northern Ireland, only 11 miles from the Giants Causeway, from which its giant turbines - no less than 85 of them are planned - would be clearly seen.

That there is widespread and vigorous opposition to this goes without saying. If I lived in those parts myself, I might be tempted to contact the IRA, who must have plenty of explosives lying idle at present and might be willing to use them, for once, in a good cause. But that would be seriously illegal, wouldn't it?

The wind industry is an important part of the Government's "renewable energy" programme, supported by environmentalists and other well-meaning people who have not thought carefully enough about schemes which if achieved will, in effect, industrialise the most beautiful landscapes in our country.

The Wind Energy Council, which is a front for the companies that run this highly profitable industry, takes full advantage of the popular appeal of a form of power generation which, unlike older forms, seems clean and innocent.

It is not difficult to exploit this appeal, which is why the frequent opinion polls the industry carries out can often be made to yield results in favour of wind power, even among people who live near the turbines and suffer all the nuisances they inflict, of 70 or 80 per cent, while those opposed are made to seem selfish and reactionary aesthetes more concerned with their cherished landscapes than with human welfare.

So the wind industry proceeds virtually unchecked to obliterate what remains of beauty and seemliness in our country and assimilate everything in its way, whether historical and legendary sites or mere pleasant country places, into the industrial complex.

Soon, if its depredations are not halted, there will be, wherever we look, nothing left but the strictly utilitarian. Wherever we look, we shall be made to realise that for those who rule our country and direct its policies nothing counts but "growth" and "the economy". What's this but madness? What can those who are fated to live like this do but go mad? When shall we wake from this evil dream?

Must It Be

Who will be the next director-general of the BBC? Who will continue (and perhaps end) the line that runs all the way from the awesome, austere Lord Reith, with his strict moral tone, down to the blokeish, vulgarian Greg Dyke, whose noted slogan "cut the crap" would have been not merely abhorrent but perhaps hardly intelligible to his high-minded predecessor?

The contrast between these two men is a measure of the descent of the BBC in the 80 years of its existence from high seriousness to plebeian banality.

In that time, a strange assortment of characters have presided over its ever-expanding bureaucracy. Few of them, if any, would have had Lord Reith's approval. Hugh Carleton Greene, the giant tusked warthog, is one who comes vividly to mind - he who boasted that he had dragged the BBC into the "permissive age" of the Sixties and let fresh air into what he called its stuffy recesses.

His great enemy was the then famous apostle of old-fashioned decency, Mrs Mary Whitehouse. Such was his hatred of her that he steadfastly refused to meet her and, when he retired, it was said he commissioned a life-size painting of her in the nude, and would amuse himself in leisure hours by throwing darts at it.

Another remarkable director-general was Sir William Haley, a bookish man of such extreme impassivity that he was nicknamed "the man with two glass eyes".

There was a story that when the then Irish ambassador, a man of jovial temperament, had a meeting with him in his office at Broadcasting House, it consisted of 15 minutes of uninterrupted silence, after which the ambassador was found wandering in the corridor outside, pleading "for God's sake, will nobody get me a drink?"

Another "D-G", whose name I cannot remember, fell out so seriously with Mrs Thatcher that his tenure of office was mysteriously and abruptly terminated, adding to the detestation felt for her by the average BBC person and accounting partly for the well-founded belief that the BBC has an "institutionalised" bias to the Left.

What kind of director-general will emerge from the present feud between the Blairite clique and the BBC? Will the Blairite clique seek to impose a director-general who will do what he is told about Iraq and everything else? That would be unacceptable to the BBC high-ups who would have their own favoured candidate.

Might there be a schism like that in the medieval Papacy, with two rival directors-general setting up their own rival headquarters, perhaps in London and Manchester? Would there be a war for control of different departments or groups of departments? Who would get sport, nature programmes, drama? Who would seize sitcoms in a lightning coup?

Might former glories be revived, notably the genuine original Third Programme, only to be suppressed again by the opposing faction?

• A new collection of Peter Simple's columns, Peter Simple's Domain, is available for £12.99 (plus 99p p&p per order). To order, call Telegraph Books Direct on 0870 155 7222